The Ministry of education proposed to tighten the rules of university Olympiads

In Russia, university Olympiads should be held according to requirements comparable to the rules for organizing the Unified State Exam (UGE), the head of the Ministry of Education and Science Valery Falkov said at a meeting of the Federation Council Committee on Science, Education and Culture.

“One of the principles that we proposed and support all colleagues is university Olympiads, to make a standard equivalent to the standard of the All-Russian School Olympiad and hold them according to the same requirements as the Unified State Examination is organized and the All-Russian School Olympiad is held,” the minister said.

Falkov also spoke about measures to change the order of preferential admission of Olympiad winners to universities. According to him, next year they should significantly reduce the tension that arose during the admission campaign of 2026 between applicants with high exam results and Olympians.

“At many universities, we will simply get away from the fact that all places are occupied by Olympiads,” the head of the Ministry of Education and Science emphasized.

Earlier, adviser to the President of Russia Elena Yampolskaya said that the list of Olympiads of schoolchildren, whose winners received the right to priority enrollment in universities, by the decision of the Ministry of Education and Science was reduced. According to her, part of the problems of the admission campaign in 2026 was associated with a huge number of Olympiads and their winners and prize-winners who competed with children who received the highest scores during the exam.

Before that, in September, the Ministry of Education and Science proposed a reform of admission to universities from 2027/28. The new rules could cancel the multidisciplinary competition and introduce a bonus system for additional exams and special achievements.

At the same time, the former head of Rosobrnadzor, the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building, Lyubov Glebova, believes that the school Olympiad movement is on the “fork” because of the situation in which the results of the Olympiad change the usual picture of admission to universities. In an interview with Radio RBC, she stressed that changing the vector in the Olympic movement is a matter of time.